And Yet It Flies: Chasing Aurora Looks Gorgeous

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Oh goodness. Chasing Aurora, the latest from And Yet It Moves developer Broken Rules, looks like it’s really shaping up to be something special. It’s being billed as an “explorative 2D aerial action game about the dream of flight” in the “hostile environment of the Alps.” This mood teaser, though, demonstrates hostility on par with that of a kitten herd in a warm pillow and sunlight beam factory. It’s downright serene, but in a gloriously mesmerizing fashion. I think I’ve watched the all-too-brief trailer five or so times now, just to soak up all the little details of the wind’s undulating whistle and the music’s instrumental peaks and valleys in relation to the avian main character’s traversal of actual peaks and valleys. That screenshot doesn’t do this one justice. See it in oddly absorbing, physics-powered motion after the break.

There’s apparently a multiplayer mode as well, but Broken Rules is keeping that heavily under wraps for now. An admittedly very early video, however, makes it seem pretty competitive. Regardless, this looks like something I could find myself sinking blissfully stress-free hours into. The sense of scale – accentuated by the camera’s meticulously timed zooms in and out – made me say “Gee whiz golly willikers” even on repeat viewings, which is weird, because no one actually talks like that. It’s set to launch sometime in 2012, but I want it nooooooow.

Am I the only one who rarely finds any beauty in these, umm, let’s say indie-visuals? I thought AYIM looked almost awful and this is barely any better. That’s not to say they are not good games, just that I really dislike the visual style.

I’m not saying the Tera ad looks any better on the background either, far from it. Now give me something like Minecraft, that’s a beauty right there. Now where’s the nearest hospital I can check in to?

I basically agree with everything you’ve said, except this looks LOADS better than AYIM. But that game sucked.

I think it’s that “flash-cutout” look that really puts me off… the new Rayman game did it, Isaac was built entirely in flash, and I bet it’s going to plague the new South Park game. There’s just something distinctly cheap about the animation style.

This video made me think that no game has ever captured the feeling of being a bird. I’ve seen some videos of a camera attached to an eagle as its flying full speed and through forests, which looks exhilarating to say the least. And then there is the gracefulness of it all. It would be a challenge to try to replicate that in a game.

Well, your sentiment’s well-chosen – this is one of the most birdlike experiences I can remember, though for good and ill the flapping is cosmetic.

The one true bird experience I can remember in games occupies a funny place – I remember it fondly and vividly twenty-odd years on from early childhood, but for all practical purposes it may as well never have existed. Falcon Adventure, on a greenscreen machine running CP/M-80, the short-lived predecessor to MS-DOS (I still have the DOS 2.0 disks for the machine). Fundamentally it was a Bird Week clone (predecessor? Iunno) – defend your nest while bringing food to the chicks – but added so much more. Navigation between side-on Joust-flapping flight screens was done by timing your ceaseless motions on an overhead “soaring” map grid, trying to match your position with a threatening vulture or glimpsed prey. Then, stoop on a moving target and bring home your prize to stave off that starvation meter – a mouse, a squirrel, or given enough ambition maybe the colossal dragging weight of a rabbit, with vultures harrying you the whole way.

I like the look of that. It put me in mind of Tiny Wings a bit, in that it too seems to capture some of the glory and freedom of flight, but this looked a bit more relaxing because Tiny Wings can require infuriating precision.

It’s funny to hear that the multiplayer’s under wraps, because I played it at PAX Prime last year and I think it may have been the only part that existed at the time. Fundamentally it’s a tag/race variant – one person has a doodad that keeps the screen centred on them; the goal is to touch and steal the doodad, or as the carrier to get people off the screen through speedy/tricky flying. Spend more than a few seconds offscreen and you die, with your respawn time increasing with each frag. I think you win when everyone else is dead at once? It was lovely, although I’m hooorrible at it.

Lies, dirty lies! I do live in the Alps, and lemme tell you: It’s not a hostile environment at all. On the contrary, people here are famous for their tendency to share their bottles of wine with anyone who passes by. Plus: snow is all powdery and fluffy.

Oh my yes. I couldn’t stand the look of AYIM so I never bothered with it. This looks nice enough, but more importantly, the gameplay makes me think of a 2-d pilotwings cross between birdman and the hangglider, which is a YES.